Leonie Forbes, Jamaica’s first lady of stage and screen is the spotlight and main attraction of a one-day film festival slated to be held on May 5 at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College.
Caribbean Classics, a daylong presentation will feature performances in which the thespian has either starred or featured on television or in full-length feature films.
Scheduled to begin at 2:00 p.m. four films will highlight the presentation with a conversation — perhaps explaining each — by the actress.
Forbes has garnered an impressive list of international theatre, television and film credits in Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, India and the United States.
She has consistently enthralled audiences in her native Jamaica and throughout the Caribbean.
Her film and television credits include “A Winter Tale,” “Shattered Image,” “Milk and Honey,” “The Orchid House,” “Passion and Paradise,” “Club Paradise,” “Children of Babylon,” “Going to Extremes,” “Lord Have Mercy” and “Small Island.”
Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, her accolades include a Gemini Award nomination in Canada, a life time achievement medal from El Centro Mexicano de Teatro, the Institute of Jamaica Gold Musgrave Medal and the Order of Distinction (Officer) from the Government of Jamaica.
This is a schedule of the day’s presentation:
2:00 – “What My Mother Told Me” – directed by Frances Ann Solomon (Trinidad & Tobago).
A journey towards self-discovery forces a young woman to meet her mother, whom she thought had abandoned her as a child.
3:00 – “Children of Babylon” – directed by Lennie Little-White (Jamaica).
Love, lust, race, and class collide on a hedonistic pleasure dome as life on an old plantation is confronted by a changing society. The film features reggae singer Bob Andy
5:15 – “Guttaperc” – directed by Andrew Millington (Barbados).
A storied past and the yearning for development creates conflicts for the feature of a village and family.
7:00 – Tellin’ We Own Story – In Conversation with Leonie Forbes
8:45 – “A Winter Tale” – directed by Frances-Anne Solomon.
Families struggle to reconcile their immigrant dreams after a bullet meant for a drug dealer kills a ten-year-old boy. The film features funnyman Dennis “Spragalang” Hall.
A project of the Brooklyn- based Caribbean Cultural Theatre, the Caribbean Classics Stage & Screen Series highlights the work of some of the region’s most illustrious pioneering practitioners of stage and screen and celebrates their role as social commentators, their struggles with cultural identity and in fashioning a Caribbean voice.
The series previously featured the work of Jamaican dramatist and filmmaker Trevor Rhone. His classic contribution to films were visually amplified by screenings of “The Harder They Come,” “‘Smile Orange,” and “One Love”
Guyanese novelist E. R. Braithwaite’s “To Sir With Love,” and Jamaican novelist and screenwriter, Anthony Winkler’s “The Annihilation of Fish” and “The Lunatic” also complimented the annual film series.
For additional information: 718-783-8345 / 718-270-6218 / 917-202-0696 or via info@caribbeantheatre.org
